The U.S. president was reluctantly on board with the idea, and many Americans
expected it to deteriorate into riots.

But destiny was not to be denied on that hot August day: The 1963 March on
Washington was, as the new PBS documentary The March rightly concludes, “the event that changed
American politics forever.”

The film, to air at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WOSU-TV (Channel 34), lasts just one hour,
but it easily proves its point about the lasting historical significance of the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963. The event drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people — black
and white.

It wasn’t just that there were that many people in attendance, or that the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech for which he will be remembered for
all time: It was that the march rescued the civil-rights movement from losing its moment in
history.

Produced by Lina Gopaul and David Lawson, directed by John Akomfra and narrated by
Denzel Washington,

The March is not only a timely film document, it is also properly structured as a
great drama.

Of course, through the entire story, we are waiting for the grand finale, King’s
speech. When it comes, you’ll be hard-pressed to withhold tears, not only because of the power of
King’s words and his heroic cultural status, but also because the filmmakers have carefully prepped
us to understand just a little of the great struggle that led to those moments on the afternoon
King spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

The entire history of the African-American struggle is far too complex and detailed
to be contained in a single hour, much less in just part of one as a prelude to the march. So the
filmmakers begin in 1963 in Birmingham, Ala., then considered the most segregated city in the
United States.

The face of segregation was Birmingham Sheriff Eugene “Bull” Conner, who vowed that
he would “die trying” to block any attempt to dismantle segregation in his city. When images of
Conner’s men turning fire hoses and setting attack dogs on black demonstrators hit national TV
news, many Americans saw for the first time the level of brutality invested in preserving
separatism in the South.

Nonetheless, the civil-rights movement was treading water at the time. How could it
be re-invigorated? How could it become effective in changing laws, hearts and minds?

To go forward, the movement turned to its own past and one of its greatest
leaders, A. Phillip Randolph, longtime president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Decades earlier, he had been invited to the White House to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt
to talk about his battle to end discriminatory hiring practices by U.S. military contractors.

At the time, Randolph called for a national march on Washington . It didn’t
occur then, largely because FDR wasted no time signing an executive order banning discrimination in
hiring by government contractors.

Twenty-two years later, the civil-rights movement revived Randolph’s call for a
national march, and the first organizing committee meeting was conducted on July 1 in the apartment
of Bayard Rustin, Randolph’s protege.

The march had to be organized in just eight weeks, but the goal was met, largely by
volunteers working 18-hour days and by field organizer Norman Hill Singer Harry Belafonte enlisted
support from Hollywood heavyweights such as Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and
others.

The film benefits from firsthand memories by participants such as Rep. John Lewis,
Joan Baez, Belafonte, Julian Bond, Diahann Carroll, Andrew Young and newsman Roger Mudd, who was a
fledgling CBS reporter covering the march.

We know about the march today largely through King’s speech. The PBS film gives us
greater perspective and insight, probing the conflicted attitudes toward civil rights in the
Kennedy administration.